


Patterns and Pathways

by ilcuoreardendo



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collective of Prison Break flash fics.</p><p>Up first, "In the Light of Morning." <i>Lincoln liked to wake up early whenever she slept over.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Light of Morning

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes:** Crafted using the [music meme](http://ilcuoreardendo.livejournal.com/12112.html).

  
_Half the time the world is ending  
Truth is I am done pretending  
Too much time, too long defending  
You and I are done pretending_  
"Love Remains the Same" - Gavin Rossdale  


 

Lincoln liked to wake up early whenever she slept over.

It gave him a chance to watch her before she woke, to see her—what was the saying? “warts and all?”—without her noticing his stare and changing her behavior as she often did, so subtly altering the way she sat, took a sip of coffee, bit into a pancake.

Here, she just _was_.

One hand on her chest, the other flung over her head; fine shadow of dark hair along her underarm where she hadn’t shaved; mouth parted slightly, letting out a soft snore—that she would vehemently deny when she woke up.

And the sunlight came through the broken blinds, the gap in the curtain, and lit up all of the little distinctive features of her face—what she would call imperfections—the soft lines under her eyes; the freckle just under her chin; the pale, downy hair along her jaw line; the ghost of a scar on her lower lip.

He had them all memorized.


	2. Eventualities

 

He was used to people looking at him, even before he got the tattoo. Used to quick, furtive side-eye glances—that most men wouldn’t catch—from women, the head turns and full body look-overs from men. The appraisal. The consideration. The lust.

Lincoln had always used to tease him about being “pretty as a girl.” (At 15, that was what first prompted him to shave his head. But the absence of glossy curls only seemed to draw people’s attention to his eyes, his lips…and he’d had more than one encounter with women—and men—wanting to touch the fine stubble on his scalp.)

  
In his last months of freedom, he’d been drowning in a sea of black-ink blue prints, organizing supplies, storage rentals, a car purchase, and managing several verging-on-black-market dealings; he’d given little consideration to what looks like his would mean inside the walls of Fox River.

Until, as he was undressing during his processing, he heard one of the guards say _any boy looks like that is smart in shaving off his handle ‘fore he comes here_. He’d resisted the urge to run a hand over his head.

Until, walking down the row of cells, he felt the eyes on him, the lingering stares, saw several inmates shuffle close to the bars, trying for a better look at the new meat; one of them—a bald man with a sloppy swastika scrawled on the fish-belly-white skin of his bicep, whose bulk seemed to fill the cell—blew him a kiss.

Until _today_ , cornered by T-Bag on the bleachers.

The man had the lithe walk and steady gaze of a jungle predator and he offered up his pocket with a smooth twist of fingers and a smile that was all bared teeth, promising an amalgam of humiliation and pleasure-laced pain.

And when Michael watched the smiling eyes go cold at the rejection, watched the slow uncurling of T-Bag’s mouth, heard the warning-growl behind the dismissal, he cursed himself for not anticipating this event, for not having a contingency.


End file.
